Texas Executes Woman Who Tortured, Killed Mentally Impaired NJ Man

A woman convicted of beating and killing a Cliffside Park man she lured to Texas was executed Wednesday, marking only the fourteenth female execution in the U.S. in nearly four decades.

Suzanne Basso met the 59-year-old Louis “Buddy” Musso at a church bazaar near his hometown of Cliffside Park in 1997, according to one report, and the two began a mostly long-distance relationship that lasted several months.

Basso allegedly persuaded the mentally impaired man to move to Texas. Musso spent what little money he had on an engagement ring, a set of Western-style garb and a Greyhound bus ticket to Houston.

Ten weeks later in a ditch outside of Texas’s largest city, police found Musso’s body mangled with injuries "so horrendous that he was unrecognizable."

An autopsy showed Musso had a skull fracture and 14 broken ribs, and his body was covered in cigarette burns and bruises, according to the Huffington Post, meaning Musso was most likely tortured.

Prosecutors said the woman made herself the beneficiary of Musso's insurance policies and took over his Social Security benefits sometime after he arrived in Texas, which linked her to the 1998 murder, police said.

Basso was tried and convicted of Musso's murder.

Her execution makes Basso the fourteenth woman executed in the United States since a 1976 Supreme Court decision allowed capital punishment to resume, according to the Huffington Post. Nearly 1,400 men have been executed in the same time period.